They’d had reason to believe for several weeks now that an offshoot of the Falcone crime family was ready to unbalance the crime world in Gotham, but as they were a fairly new organization, there wasn’t much to go on to be able to predict what their next move would be. Fortunately, Batman was very good at interrogation.Robin slipped in through the back window and cut the power, the screaming started almost immediately; terrified mobsters getting their asses kicked in the darkness.
Bright flashes from gunfire lit up the room sporadically. So far, it was a pretty clean mission. He took down four of them himself with a single spin kick. An unseen variable interrupted their flow. One moment he and the big guy were being seriously badass, the next thing a man - no, a kid - not much older than Jason stumbles out of the room in a bedsheet. He looked scared and confused. Before the Boy Wonder could warn him to get out of the room, that it was dangerous, a hail of bullets sprayed from one of the thugs’ guns, and he launched himself at the other boy, “Get down!”
His body collided with the other teen’s, and they both hit the ground hard. Robin looked down and his blue-green eyes widened behind the white lenses of his mask. The boy was jerking underneath him, limbs moving uncontrollably. Seizure. Shit! “Batman!” He quickly rolled off the other and kicked away nearby objects scattered around them, rolling the kid onto his side to keep his airway clear as his mentor took out the remaining criminals. He heard the last guy hit the ground and the Dark Knight appeared behind him just as the jerky movements seemed to subside.
“Robin, what—“ Jason wasn’t listening though, instead he was doing a quick sweep for injury, his gloved hands feeling the boy’s ribs and checking his pulse. Fortunately he seemed to be okay. “He just showed up from the back room, these guys... they must have—“ he bit off his own words in disgust. The subject of homeless children being exploited was a sensitive subject with him: Once it was safe to move him and the bastards were secured, Batman gathered the child up in his arms and put him in the backseat of the car. Leslie was out of town this weekend, so they couldn’t take him to the clinic, and Jason has a feeling he wouldn’t react well to being brought to the general hospital. It was decided Alfred would make sure he was going to be alright. Mere minutes later had them in the Cave, explaining the situation.
Jason was hovering, concerned that the boy hadn’t woken up yet despite being assured that he would come around soon. This could have been him, caught up with the mafia trying to survive, because he had nowhere else to go. What would happen to the other when he did wake up? He didn’t have the look of the usual Gothamite. He was cute, but thin and bruised and probably would be terrified when he regained consciousness. Guilt and empathy twisted in his stomach; he should’ve checked the back rooms for civilians first.
So after a lot of consideration, I’ve decided that Jason suffering from a Traumatic Brain Injury is going to become part of my blog canon. This is only going to apply to my main verse, and other verses where he died after being beaten by the Joker via use of a crowbar. There’s some canon evidence to support this decision, as evidenced at the end of Under The Hood and in Red Hood: The Lost Days by Judd Winnick.
More under the cut, so I’m not clogging up the dash.
In Under The Hood, Jason was said to have been dead for roughly six months before “fate” (aka Superboy-Prime punching reality) decided to set things right, as he was “never supposed to die.” He woke up, panicked because he was in a coffin and dug his way out, then apparently walked for 12.5 miles in the rain and dark with all of his injuries - as he wasn’t ‘healed’ upon waking up, so he had whatever he was suffering from before he died in the explosion, which according to the panel below included a cracked skull causing bleeding into the brain, a shattered sternum, flash burns and at least forty other fractures.
Although severely wounded the cops indicate he was awake and talking to them only to “go under” and presumably they didn’t think he was going to wake up after surgery because of the extent of his injuries. After slipping into a coma Jason was moved to a facility that cared for patients with minimal brain function. It states that he was now in a chronic vegetative state. So, not comatose, not healed, still unconscious and unresponsive, but not brain dead either. They go on to explain that it was his survival instincts that caused him to wake up even though his body shouldn’t have allowed him to.
Now, since you can’t be in a PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) and conscious at the same time, and they made sure to specify that a year had passed by the time he woke up (it takes only a few months to be declared PVS without brain trauma and at least 1 year with trauma), it seems likely that he went from being comatose, to vegetative, to finally a minimally conscious state.
According to multiple sources, people in a MCS, while not completely functional/aware, do retain some understanding of their conscious surroundings. There is enough to prove that this is distinctly different than people who are comatose or in PVS, as they are not conscious or aware of anything at all, even with stimulation. Jason woke up from a vegetative state and walked out of the hospital, surviving for more than a year on the streets while relying on his old instincts and what Batman taught him. He knew when he was cold, hungry, etc., and he also knew what to do to fix these problems.
Yet, despite his survival skills, he doesn’t attempt to seek out Bruce, and he doesn’t speak even once (that we’re shown) between the time he slipped into a coma and when Talia pushes him into the Lazarus Pit. Either he doesn’t have enough awareness to remember his death/what happened to him, or he does but doesn’t have the ability to make decisions beyond survival reflexes. I have a theory, due to the two above panels and the term jog a memory, that Jason didn’t try to find Bruce despite being in Gotham because he didn’t remember him until he was put in danger. Think about it. He woke up in an unfamiliar place, in no physical pain, wandered outside…
What was Jason doing before he met Bruce at age 12? He was living on the streets! Stealing to survive! So he went back to doing that. Whether he was aware something was wrong with him during this time is debatable, but it seems doubtful.
It’s more likely that the familiar environment of the alley and being subjected to pain (especially since that would have been the last thing he remembered before his death) just provoked a similar response that he would have had while being attacked as Robin.
Don’t ask me why an alcoholic, homeless former criminal knew someone that was friends with Talia Al Ghul. They never explain.
Back to the point; aside from his survival skills Jason seemed unable to actually function in his condition. Talia knew it, as did Ra’s, and so did the doctors they hired. In the following final panels from Under The Hood, Ra’s admits that Jason could be useful one day but decides that after a year of trying to get Jason to respond enough to tell them how he came back to life, he’s unlikely to ever speak or…emote, ever again.
Despite multiple people insisting that Jason will never recover mentally, despite physically being at peak health and having the conditioning of an Olympic athlete, they all claim that his brain damage is too severe and that naturally he could never regain any form of awareness again. Talia disputes this, and she seems correct, to a degree.
Though he lashes out when provoked through pain, he never fights back when it’s her, something she’s quick to point out. This indicates he has enough awareness that he realizes this is a person trying to help him. Someone that cares.
Supposedly, people in a minimally conscious state can exhibit emotional reactions to specific stimuli, such as smiling or crying. When Talia begins talking to Jason about Bruce, about how he misses Jason and has been grieving and suffering since his death, Jason doesn’t verbally respond in anyway, but he cries. Talia seems to understand that he does hear her, even though he can’t respond, which means he does remember Bruce, and he misses him too.
After being exposed to a Lazarus Pit, Jason regains all of his memories, his ability to speak, and consciousness of his surroundings as well as the other abilities he had before his death. However, due to the fact that his brain had several years time to heal before his exposure, and it was still developing at the time to boot (meaning he’s arguably mentally younger than he’s supposed to be, thinking like a 15 year old as opposed to a 19-20 year old), I find it likely that aside from “waking” him up, so to speak, it did little else. Although he has recovered enough to live the “normal” life of your typical gun-totting vigilante, Jason does still suffer from the side effects of the severe brain damage that Joker inflicted on him.
This includes cognitive problems that give him learning disorder like symptoms, such as Dyslexia, and difficulty reading fine print/fancy script especially. Early on he had a lot of trouble with some of his fine and gross motor skills, having to relearn many of them. There’s also neurobehavioral problems, which are described as behavioral problems attributed to specific aspects of a brain injury. Individuals may develop difficulty with self-control, impulse control, frustration, anger and aggression issues, and behaving with inappropriate ways socially. Physical therapy/training, something Jason participates in frequently because of his lifestyle, can help repair muscle and neuromotor skills. While he is frustrated frequently due to the limitations he suffers from, it’s not enough that it actually prevents him from doing most things.
It’s mostly mental deficits that impede his day to day life. TBIs can cause emotional, social, or behavioral problems and changes in personality. Jason in particular is emotionally unstable and suffers from depression (occasionally to the point of being self destructive and at times suicidal) and anxiety that are linked to his trauma, social withdrawal, inability to control his anger… he has insomnia and goes through bipolar-like mania not unrelated to his PTSD, and his psychosis can be triggered by unexpected things (such as the video will Bruce left him after he supposedly died, an example of by far one of his worst mental breakdowns).
